KARACHI: `Lucrative jobs and titles are important, but it is also good to bring about a change in someone`s life. We need to bring some sort of goodness in our surroundings. And to bring that goodness to your surroundings requires passion. Passion to keep moving on despite hurdles,` said educationist and principal of the PECHS Girls` School Seema Malik, who is also a former director of the Teachers` Resource Centre (TRC).

She was speaking at TRC`s Early Childhood Education (ECE) certificate programme here on Saturday evening. It was the eighth such graduation ceremony organised by TRC`s Institute of Early Childhood Education. The programme offers training for in-service and pre-service teachers of threeto five-yearold students, while giving them acommon vision about how to teach little children.

About teachers` training at the TRC, Ms Malik said that one of the most rewarding things that she had done was enrolling the teachers of PECHS school for the course. `As a result the PECHS school has greatly benefited. The ECE has changed the conversation in the staff room.

Initially, the schools paid for their teachers to take the course, but now participants themselves are paying to take more courses here,` she said.

Meanwhile, in her presentation, TRC`s Academic Programmes Adviser Mahnaz Malik took the audience on a nostalgic journey through the eight years of the centre`s ECE existence.

She talked about the 10-month academically rigorous programme that is flexible in its approach. She also talked aboutthe longand painstaking process of designing the course in collaboration withSheridan College and Ryerson University in Canada.

She said the TRC had signed a memorandum of understanding with those organisations that allowed credit transfer to pursue a diploma there and also said that graduates were now able to get excellent opportunities after doing the course.

The 20 graduates 2014 were a mixed batch of pre-service and in-service teachers, some of whom spoke on the occasion and talked about how the programme had changed their lives and their understanding of young children and their development.

Certificates were also presented to eight alumni who completed a special `Leadership and management course` conducted by Mahnaz Mahmud.

The TRC is a non-profit non-governmental organisation established by a group of educationists in response to the declining standards of education in both the government and privatesector schools.